Memories of Caprica
by Lizardbeth J
Summary: If you hold on to something too tightly, it can crack. Sam Anders can't let go of anything, even when he should.


**Pairing: **Sam/Kara, and memory of Sam/OFC (er, kind of)

**Spoilers:** Set after _Rapture_ and just before _Taking a Break..._

**Summary**: If you hold on to something too tightly, it begins to crack.

* * *

**Memories of Caprica  
**

Jean found Sam where she thought she would -- throwing a ball into the makeshift pyramid goal. It rattled in the basket and down the chute before rolling out the front again. She watched from the doorway as he hurled the ball through the hole, retrieved it, and then threw it again. The motions were mechanical but angry as well.

Her lips flattened. She'd seen this before, more often lately when he returned from _Galactica_. It made her want to hurt Kara, and only knowing that Sam wouldn't approve stayed her hand.

But he hadn't been to see Kara today, so it wasn't that.

"Anders?" she asked.

_Clang!_

"Hey, Barolay," he answered flatly.

She approached, a slow and cautious path, feeling more concerned. He'd done this during the Resistance too, some deep anger rising to the surface and finding expression in hurling the ball like he was punching something.

"Sam," she started and said his name until he stopped. Even then he clutched the ball in his hands and wouldn't look at her, standing tensely as though waiting for his first free moment to throw it.

She put her hands on the ball and tugged, keeping a constant but low pressure. "Let it go," she murmured. "Sam, let it go."

He released the ball, and it was as though that also cut the supports holding him up. He slumped and he let out a breath, closing his eyes and looking so tired, she wondered when he'd last slept.

* * *

_"Anders, it's not safe."_

_He crept closer to the edge, binoculars in hand. "I want to see." _

_His feet skid on the loose shale and he rode the little avalanche until he could catch the pine tree and hold himself there. The rocks tumbled down, like a waterfall, over the edge._

_But he had a fine view of the plains of Philippi. They looked normal at first -- farmland stretched out as far as he could see with the glint of sunlight on water. But the city of Philippi wasn't there. Where there should've been skyscrapers, there was nothing. But the binoculars told the real story: metal girders thrown like children's toys around a new lake where the river had settled into the crater of the explosion._

_Nothing and no one could have lived through that._

_Only his imagination could supply the look of terror on her face as the bomb fell and those precious seconds before the shock wave hit and she was incinerated._

_All for a stupid interview with a Continental League player drafted by the Panthers._

_He whispered, "Serina."_

_It was the last time her name would pass his lips for years._

* * *

"Come here," she led him to the side of the room and pushed him gently to sit on one of the boxes of spare parts, while she took the barrel of machine oil next to it. "Talk to me, Sam. What's wrong?"

He chuckled once, without any humor. "You're being all maternal again, it's weird."

She just leveled a stare at him, waiting. If he thought he was going to get her off the subject that easily, he didn't know her as well as he should.

"It's nothing," he tried next. "I'm fine."

"Right. Did you hear something from Starbuck?" she asked. He flinched a little, but shook his head.

"Then what happened?" she asked. "I've only seen you like this after you see her, or, before... when we were killing toasters."

At first, in the Resistance, he'd had a hard time killing the skinjobs. Actually, killing them came easy, but afterward, he'd often gotten drunk and went to pound balls on the court. But there were no toasters to kill here in the fleet and the relative safety of the _Luna II_.

He looked down at his hands. "Really, it's nothing. I'm not sleeping well, that's all."

"Why not?"

"Bad dreams," he admitted in a murmur, and she lifted her brows in surprise, at the answer and that he would admit it at all.

"I don't think anyone has a shortage of those," she said. "I know I don't. Those farms, and being shot at, and the occupation --"

But he shook his head. "Not like that. This is different. It's always the same."

He paused and then asked softly, "You remember before the colonies blew up - I told you about Serina?"

She nodded. "I remember." She hadn't met Serina, because Sam had met her during vacation, but she knew who he was talking about. At training camp, just before the attack, he'd talked to her every day, even with mobile reception so chancy up in the mountains. Jean remembered teasing him about being "in love".

* * *

_His agent Leo had set it up. There was a two-month break between the last game of the season against Aerilon and training camp, and Leo had thought it would be a good idea to keep his name out there in between seasons. The journalist from Caprica Sports Monthly would come to his house, and they'd do a short interview and some photographs. _

_The magazine had offered a nice chunk of money for the privilege, but he didn't need the money and it felt a little violating. But eager fans meant the Bucs wouldn't trade him to someplace dismal, so he agreed, with some reluctance._

_When the doorbell rang, Leo went to answer it. Sam heard the tapping of high heels in the front hall and stood up to greet the journalist and her photographer._

_She came in and he very nearly stared. Gods, she was gorgeous. Why had nobody told him Serina Delphino was such a stunner? Light brown hair hung in expensively-cut wisps around her Aphrodite-statue face and the wide smile she was directing at him. In her heels, she was very nearly his height, and her red suit managed to look conservative and yet show off how thin and leggy she was._

_She paused on the threshold at the sight of him, and he stirred himself to go to her. Her handclasp was strong and professional. "Mister Anders, I'm Serina Delphino."_

_He put himself together with a small effort and corrected, with a smile of his own, "Sam. Please. Welcome."_

_He greeted the photographer too, but never remembered his name._

_The interview passed quickly, and even though he was more private than she wanted, she somehow got him to reveal that he'd bought the house down the street and given it to his sister and her family._

_During the photograph session, she made quips and pulled faces to make him laugh. He feared his reputation for being the serious captain of the Bucs was about to go down the drain._

_On the way out, when the photographer was outside loading the equipment, she smiled at him with a look he recognized. "I don't usually do this, I promise, but ... if you'd like to meet off the record," she said and tucked her card in his shirt pocket. "Call me."_

_Then she turned and walked out the door. One week later, she was back in his house and this time, she got to see the red sheets of his bed._

* * *

"You're having nightmares about Serina?" Jean asked, trying to be sympathetic, and yet terribly confused. She'd died in the attack and as he hadn't mentioned her since, she'd thought he'd long since moved on

"Not just her. Well, yes," he corrected himself and gave a dry laugh. "Sort of. I dream about all of them. Serina was a Cylon."

She stared at him, unable to process for a second. His mouth made a bitter smile. "Yeah. Of course, I didn't know. I don't even think she knew. She never did anything suspicious that I can remember. But when I started seeing her twins after the attack, it wasn't hard to figure out."

She didn't even have to ask which model, knowing that Sam would choose the long-legged, tall one with the big eyes and wide smile every time. "A Model Six."

* * *

_Serina. She was blonde this time, but other than that looked the same. She was walking side by side with one of the dark-haired female models with two Centurions following in their wake._

_"Take the Centurions first," he murmured, and at his side Sue-Shaun nodded. "Go."_

_The world erupted in a hail of gunfire, as he and Sue-Shaun fired._

_When it was done, all four Cylons were down._

_He never knew if he or Sue-Shaun shot her first. He told himself she was a Cylon. A skinjob just like the others. One of the enemy who had tricked him into loving her while infiltrating the colonies._

_But the image of empty eyes and that familiar body riddled with bullets in the dirt joined with the others in his mind. That night he could only chase it away with two hours of pyramid practice and a flask of ambrosia._

* * *

He didn't confirm directly, watching his hands pluck restlessly at the fabric of his pants. "Do you know how many of them I've killed? Eight I'm sure of. Possibly fourteen more. And that not even counting the ones that died on missions I sent other people on."

She was horrified that he was keeping track. "You kill one and four more pop up in its place. They're toasters, Sam."

"They're people!" he roared, coming off the crate suddenly. He took a step toward her and she found herself shrinking back, heart leaping with fear. He caught himself though, chest heaving and his hands clenched at his sides. "Sharon Agathon is a person, Jean. A person who made a choice. They all are. Except some of them don't have choices. They're only what they're told to be, and you know what? So are we. I know we had no choice, and that's why we did it. And I'd frakking do it all again. But I hate what I have to become to kill them, I hate that I have to not care every time I pull a bullet in a woman I loved once, and I hate that I don't know if there's any Sam left any more. Sometimes I think I'm just some... killing machine waiting to be turned on again."

"Sam..." she started, feeling rather helpless. What the frak could she say? There wasn't anything. She was sure this mess with Kara wasn't helping him any, but he'd already made it clear that he didn't want to hear about it.

Then he added four more words, "There's one on _Galactica_."

Frak. There was a Six on _Galactica_? "There is? Why is she alive?"

"She was on Baltar's base star, and I hear she's in the brig to give up dirt on him. She helped Sharon escape with Hera." His hands worked, opening and closing, as he looked past the room, no doubt toward the cell that held the Cylon prisoner.

But his lips twisted into a bitter, defeated grimace. "And I'm too much of a coward to go ask if she knows me."

"Gods, Sam," she breathed, trying to think. "What would that prove? Even if she is Serina, what could you do?"

"Something. Nothing. I don't know." He walked to the other side, his back to her. "Sometimes I just want things back the way they were. Back when life seemed worth living, not this futile running and hiding and killing. I'm so tired of it all."

He laughed once bitterly and rested his head against the wall. "Frak, listen to me, dumping all over you. Like life doesn't suck for everyone."

"That's okay," she reassured him. She crossed to behind him and put a hand on his shoulder. "I'm glad you finally told me. It's been eating you inside all these years, hasn't it? But it's time to let go." He made a soft sound of denial, and she rubbed his back slowly, with long, soothing strokes like he was a nervous horse about to bolt. "One of the things that I love about you is that you hold on to things, Sam. You hold on to who you are -- you hold on to your morals and your soul, even after the rest of us gave up a long time ago. But if this is killing you, you've got to let go."

"What if I can't?" he asked, muffling his voice against the wall. But he leaned into her, and she let him, offering her own strength when he needed it.

She rested her head against his shoulder, wrapping her arm around his waist. "You have to. You're only going to find a new life if you let go of the old one."

And she knew they weren't talking about Cylon ghosts any more.

"I know," he admitted in a murmur. "Thank you." He turned his head to kiss her hair. "Don't die on me, Barolay."

"Not planning on going anywhere, Anders."

* * *

_Sharon got him into see the Six who called herself Caprica. He stood outside the plastic cage and looked at her. The way she curled up her long legs on the cot and pillowed her head on her hands was achingly familiar._

_She glanced up with little curiosity, but the instant she saw him, she was on her feet and across the cell to stand before him._

_"I wondered if you would visit me," she said with a smile. "Sam Anders."_

_He swallowed and took a deep breath, trying to quell the anxious roiling of his stomach. "How do you know me?"_

_Her smile widened. "How could I not know you? You were in the basement on Caprica when we let you go. And later, on New Caprica, I took your name off the census list. You officially stopped existing."_

_Every day on New Caprica he had expected the Occupation authorities to take him to detention and that day had never come. Twice she had saved him, even though saving him would mean he could continue to fight and kill her people. His eyes couldn't leave hers. "Why? Why did you keep saving me?"_

_She put a hand flat on the glass, and in her eyes was pity and love. "Because my sister still loves you."_

_He stepped back. Away from her. Another step. Another. Until he was outside in the corridor. He couldn't breathe._

_"Sir? Are you all right?" one of the guards asked in concern, but he pushed him away and started walking. His feet knew where he wanted to go._

_"Sam?" it was Kara's startled voice as he entered the pilots' rack room. "What are you doing here?"_

_"Shut up," he ordered and kissed her, trying to forget. Trying to lose himself. Trying not to feel how he was fraying at the edges._

_It didn't help, because he knew it was only a moment, a flicker from a fire he'd tried to hold, only have it burn what little of him was left. It was time to let go._

_"I love you." He let himself have one last look at her face, and turned to see the other pilots studiously ignoring them._

_He could feel the weight of her gaze on him as he walked away._

_It felt a lot like falling. But his hands were finally empty._

* * *

note: yes, "Serina" is a nod to the Classic BSG, in case you were wondering. 


End file.
